Happy 2nd Anniversary, Final Fantasy XIV: Dawntrail

Happy 2nd Anniversary, Final Fantasy XIV: Dawntrail

It ain't a perfect expansion for the MMORPG, but it's an important one.

June 28 marked the second anniversary of Dawntrail, the fifth expansion for Square Enix's popular massively multiplayer RPG  Final Fantasy XIV. The expansion that came beforehand, Endwalker, finished a 10-year story with a climax that was hype as hell. And the expansion that came before that, Shadowbringers, is still considered one of the best RPG stories ever written. FFXIV’s creators intended for Dawntrail to kick off a whole new story arc for the game, which meant that it had a whole lot to live up to in summer 2024.

Did Dawntrail keep up the story momentum of the Shadowbringers / Endwalker hype train that drew in new players and press from far and wide? Of course not. That's impossible. Did Dawntrail give us a strong starting point to a brand-new chapter of the Warrior of Light's long, long history of saving the continent, the world, nay, the very universe from all that would harm and consume it? Yes, because stories need valleys as well as peaks. There is no artistic equivalent of Mars' Olympus Mons, no mountain that climbs forever, no climax that endures for weeks.

Dawntrail begins with your Warrior of Light making the journey to the far-western tropical lands of Tuliyollal, where a rite of succession is being held. The expansion's easygoing tone and humid jungle surroundings change abruptly when a world-shifting event hits Tuliyollal like a bullet train. A little too abruptly, some fans argue: It's easy to see where FFXIV producer Naoki Yoshida and his team decided it was time to rev up the drama engine and move the story along instead of maybe trusting the player to spend more time amongst Tuliyollal's foliage. Granted, it gets harder and harder to determine where people's patience ends these days. And the wick is only getting shorter as smart devices and AI eat our brains alive. It's hard to blame Yoshida for taking the bullet-train approach. 

Poisoned discourse was another problem immediately after Dawntrail's release. Valid criticism of Dawntrail still gets mixed up with scorn for Sena Bryer, the trans voice actor for one of Dawntrail's main characters, the lionlike Wuk Lamat. But when you separate the wheat from the chaffiest of chaff, you discover most sensible fans can recognize Dawntrail's strengths alongside its weaknesses. Its soundtrack is mind-bendingly gorgeous, for one thing; lead composer Masayoshi Soken and the FFXIV sound team keeps getting better. Their prestige has reached the point that Rage Against the Machine guitarist Tom Morello recently dropped a guest track for a climactic boss battle that caps a fantasy wrestling raid story arc involving magical steroids. It's as crazy and fun as it sounds.    

Even Dawntrail's story pacing problems don't detract from its ultimate message about the acceptance of death and the healing power of grief. Sometimes our personal lives are the seasoning that elevates a decent story into a tale that brands itself onto the heart.

Dawntrail is one of FFXIV's valleys (the others, most argue, is its second expansion, Stormblood, and the caldera of failure that was Final Fantasy XIV 1.0). But what are valleys but lush, fertile feeding grounds for the animals that eventually brave the peaks? The Warrior of Light is entitled to their rest in the tropics … especially now that we know things are about to get mighty cold and dark for them.